


knell

by badbavarois



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Season 4 Spoilers, blade of marmora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 07:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12405936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badbavarois/pseuds/badbavarois
Summary: (the solemn sound of a bell, often indicating a death)Lotor saved him. Keith hates him for that.





	knell

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a few days ago but i was too lazy to post it so here it is now ~~~  
> not beta-ed so please be kind and let me know if i made any typos rip

He can’t breathe after Lotor saves them. This wasn’t meant to happen, he was going to save, everyone, he was going to heal the rift between him and the paladins,  _ he was going to fix things,  _ but that’s not an option anymore.

 

(It never was.)

 

Matt is the only one to talk to him afterward, pulls him aside during a party in the castle of lions. He barely knows him, but Pidge has seemed happier lately, smiling on the few occasions Keith as seen her. They look the exact same except for the eyes - Matt seems a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit more tired. He’s scared Pidge will look like that one day, too.

 

“Why did you do that?” Matt asks.

 

Keith wants to be honest, but he doesn’t know Matt, can’t hurt him like that. He can’t tell him the lengths he would go to fit in, to find a home, to know his place in all of this. 

 

(Maybe he’s not built to have a family.)

 

“I have a job. The Blades don’t put the individual ahead of the mission.”

 

It’s true enough, but Keith barely fits in there any more than he did with Voltron. It’s better than being the black lion, at least, and Shiro is a better leader. Keith can’t think like that, needs people to tell him how to work and how to fight until he has a better idea that he can do alone.

 

(His better idea was flying straight into the battle cruiser’s shield and blowing himself up to save a few billion life forms. He doesn’t work in teams for a reason.)

 

“You didn’t know it would work.”

 

“I had to try,” he says, and Matt doesn’t need to hear this but he’s the first person to want to listen to him in months, and he can’t stop. “I had to do something. No one had a plan. We were going to die anyway.”

 

(He would die for all of them. That doesn’t make them want him anymore.)

 

“You can’t - Voltron - “

 

“Allura told me to pick a side. I did. They don’t need me anymore, but the Blades do.  _ The Blades  _ figured out what was happened while Voltron was busy doing light shows.”

 

Matt swallows, nods. “You got me there,” he laughs, and that’s Pidge’s smile, Pidge’s laugh. He won’t miss this, he tells himself.

 

(He will.)

 

“The Blades are heading back to our base. I’ll see you around?”

 

He doesn’t wait for a response, turns his mask on and runs.

 

(He’ll never see Matt again. He’ll never see any of them.)

 

A week later, a Blade mission gets him in the right place at the right time. They got the intel, Kolivan is yelling over the comms that he has thirty ticks to get his ass back in the ship. His hands are wrapped around the controls of the Galra fighter so they don’t shake, he’s breathing hard and his heartbeat is all he can hear, but the decision is obvious.

 

(He ran away from foster homes and he ran away from the garrison and he ran away from Voltron. The Blades of Marmora are just another destination on the map, another footnote in his life.)

 

Galra fighters aren’t as fast as the lions by any stretch, but he can pilot them without much thought. He misses having Red is his head, misses having her there to keep him straight, but it’s good to have time to think. Time to decide where he’s going.

 

He doesn’t have any food, just as his blade uniform when it comes to life support. That’ll last him a long time, as long as he doesn’t fuck it up again, which leaves him with the last problem. 

 

He doesn’t know how long this ship will fly, or what will happen when someone inevitably comes across him. If the Galra find him, they’ll blast him clear out of the sky until he’s little more than unsalvageable metal. If it’s anyone not friendly to the Galra, he’ll receive the same treatment.

 

So he picks a direction and flies. With any luck, he’ll hit something eventually.

 

(He wants to go home, but the last place that was his was that shack out in the desert. He didn’t have any personal belongings, just a collection of things lifted from the garrison, but it was still his. He could point at it and say,  _ ‘I built that. I made that for myself and it’s mine.’) _

 

He flies until his hands shake too badly for him to maintain a steady course. He holds them tight to his body, squeezes them into fists and presses them into his stomach. He sleeps fitfully for a few vargas until he smacks his head against the icy glass and jerks himself awake.

 

(He tells himself he doesn’t dream. He just doesn’t dream of anything he wants to remember.)

 

He finds the closest inhabited and flies for it. He’s not like Hunk - he can’t imagine how didn’t flavors will come to together, can’t cook, can barely tell what’s editable from what will make him sick and what will kill him - but he can steal. 

 

He walks through the market, hands swaying at his side. He doesn’t have his mask on, but his cowl is up, hiding his face from the planet’s scorching sun. Fruit is easy to take. He shoves it in the back pockets of his belt, smiles and chats up the purple and pink attendant. This market doesn’t have protein supplements, but Keith shouldn’t have expected them too.

 

He’s breaking atmo 20 doboshes later, some orange fruit half eaten in his hand as the juice drips down his chin. He doesn’t know how long the rest will last him, but he’s flying again and not looking back.

 

(He doesn’t belong anywhere. He could fly forever and never find a home.)

 

Space is really big. He knew that even before he joined the garrison. He knew that when he was a paladin of Voltron. But, it never really set in until he was alone in a Galra fighter, hundreds of thousands of miles and a couple quintants away from everyone he knows. When he was little, the stars seemed so close together, packed in so densely. Now, he’s alone in the darkness, stares out at its expanse. 

 

He’s almost out of food again, and what’s left is going soft. At his current speed, the closest planet is two quintants two his left. He doesn’t change course. 

 

(He wants to go back to Earth. That’s impossible; he’ll never reach it. He’ll die before then, starve, grow old, lose the will to exist. He doesn’t even know where it is.)

 

He runs out of food and keeps flying. 

 

(There’s nothing for him to go back to.)

 

He passes stars and planets, skirts around a battle at the edge of the Galra Empire. It’s not his fight anymore. He did his time, he freed over a third of the galaxy from a ten thousand year regime. He doesn’t owe them anything.

 

(And yet - )

 

He turns his fighter around and flies back to the battle. The Galra ignore him and the rebels have a few hundred other fighters firing lasers at them to worry about. He weaves his way through the swarms before slipping in through one of the launch tubes on a Galra cruiser. His fighter won’t last long there, but he can already get another one.

 

Kolivan used to get mad at him when he drew attention to himself while on a mission, but Keith knows how to take care of himself. He’s breathing hard as he sprints through the halls, sliding on his knees, knocking the legs out from under sentries before stabbing them with his sword. He’s out of shape from his time in the fighter, but this is what he’s meant to do. He doesn’t know anything else. 

 

(Maybe he should have stayed with the Blades. Maybe he would have been happy there, eventually. It’s too late for that now, though.)

 

He’s in another fighter and a few hundred feet away from the cruiser when it explodes. 

 

The force of it pushes his fighter forward. He flies out of his seat and hits his head on the controls hard enough for him to black out for a few seconds. His vision is blurred and he can feel blood slowing sliding down his face beneath his mask, but the fighter keeps flying. He clambers back into his seat and blinks a few times. He gets rid of his mask to check in the damage in the glass of the fighter, wipes away blood with the back of his hand. 

 

He has a gash on his side from a sentry, and it’s bleeding heavily, but there’s nothing he can do for now. He presses his cowl between the blood and the seat hard enough to hurt. It does little to slow the bleeding.

 

He can barely see well enough to fly normally, let alone through the end of the battle, but he manages to find an edge for him to run for. 

 

(It’s not his fight.)

 

He flies for a few more vargas, pinches himself everytime he starts to lose consciousness. The blood flow has slowed to a steady trickle, but he’s still worried. His gloves are less dark gray and more a dark red. It covers the controls, the glass - the texture of his gloves in embossed in blood.

 

He’s alone. These fighters are made to be piloted by sentries - they don’t have med supplies or life support. He needs to keep his mask on if he wants to breathe, needs two hands to pilot, needs a hand to keep pressure on the wound. 

 

(He needs help.)

 

But space is massive, a dark beast waiting to swallow you whole. Out here, Keith only has himself. 

 

(It’s his fault. He’s the one who left.)

 

He should live - he’s gotten worse injuries and pulled through. But then again, he always had someone with him then.

 

(He didn’t leave. They drove him out. They told him to make a decision, and he did. They told him to lead and he did and they hated it. They told him they needed him, but was it him or the paladin? He made the decision he thought was right, told himself was right, and look where it got him. He would die for them, but they wouldn’t do the same.)

 

He knows he can’t sleep, but being asleep and in pain sounds a lot better than being awake and in pain.

 

_ (“The Marmora can go on without you. They have for thousands of years. Voltron cannot. We cannot.) _

 

Who is he without Voltron? He tried to be a Blade, tried to do what he thought was right, and for what? He’s still dying in a Galra fighter. He’s still alone. He still lost Red. 

 

(It’s his fault.)

 

A quintant later, he’s no longer bleeding. He doesn’t know how much he lost, but he knows it was a lot, with the way it covers the cockpit.  He doesn’t have any food, doesn’t have any water, and the navigation systems are still fucked from the explosion. He doesn’t know how to fix it, or if it’s even possible. 

 

(He’s going to die.)

 

He keeps flying, going as fast as he can. He’ll either hit a planet or die, and at this point, he doesn’t know which is worse. 

 

(Lotor shouldn’t have saved him. Out here, his death means nothing. He’s dying for  _ nothing.  _ No one will ever know what happened to him. The fighter will just drift through space and his body will freeze and eventually disappear into nothing. If it weren’t to Lotor, maybe the paladins would have been proud of him instead of looking at him like he’s the reason the Galra Empire has lasted ten thousand years and so many people have suffered and died.)

 

Another quintant passes and he’s unconscious more than he’s not. He’s cold and tired and everything hurts and he’s alone, hands clamped on the controls and a frail attempt to make it look like he has his life together and that he’s not bleeding again.

 

And then he runs out of fuel. He’s all alone. There’s nothing out here - he hasn’t seen a star on the horizon in vargas. He’s alone and he’s bleeding again and he’s going to die.

 

(He always knew this was how it was going to end. He had hoped it would be glorious, in a battle everyone would remember, but he’s not Shiro. No one cares about him.)

 

He sleeps again. He dreams about Voltron and the paladins and the garrison and his dad. He left everything behind. He didn’t want to count on anyone and know he’s paying the price. But still - 

 

He opens the comms channel and keys in the castle’s frequency. He knows he’s too far away for it to be worth anything, but he still has a chance. 

 

“Help me,” he says, breathless and broken. He hasn’t spoken in weeks. He knows the message won’t reach Allura, but still - he has to try. He doesn’t have any other options. “Please, Allura.  _ Help me.” _

 

(They’ll never find him. They wouldn’t even come if they heard -  _ the mission comes first. We’ll talk later.) _

 

_ (Are you even trying?) _

 

_ (You’re ruining everything.) _

 

_ (The Blade of Marmora doesn’t need you.) _

 

_ (Make a decision.) _

 

_ (You’re tearing the team apart.) _

 

_ (You must lead Voltron.) _

 

_ (You’re ruining everything.) _

 

_ (You must - ) _

 

_ (YOU MUST PILOT THE BLACK LION.) _

 

He wakes up. He’s still alone in the black of space. He’s bleeding again, and his cowl is dark with blood and sticking to the wound. He turns his mask off. His skin is flush and sweat soaked. The air is thin in the fighter, and cold, and thick with the scent of blood.

 

(He’s not going to make it.)

 

_ “Keith - Keith!” _

 

Everything is out of focus. His body isn’t his own. Someone’s touching him, pulling him out of his seat. He doesn’t know who it is. He can’t open his eyes, can’t ask who it is. 

 

_ “ _ ... _ make it…” _

 

_ “...know yet…” _

 

_ “Keith…” _

 

(Keith has been alone his whole life. He’s never stayed anywhere long enough to have a family. But still - he wishes he did.)

 

He wakes up in one of the cryopods in the Castle of Lions. When the pod opens, no one is waiting for him. He wraps his arms around his waist and walks back to his room. He’s still sore, a bit stiff and his head hurts like a motherfucker, but it’s better than before. 

 

The castle is quiet and dark, lighting up as he walks through corridor after corridor, dark again once he leaves. He still feels like he’s completely alone. He’s a few feet away from his room his room when he sees Lance. He stops. 

 

“We thought you wouldn’t make it,” Lance says. He’s not smiling, doesn’t look happy to see Keith. He shouldn’t have called them, should have kept running and never looked back. “We were just in range of your signal. I didn’t think we should follow it. We didn’t know who it was, your voice was too faint to make out, the frequency matched a  _ Galra  _ fighter - “

 

“Lance, it’s - “

 

“When we found you, I barely recognized you. The entire interior of the fighter was covered in blood. You were laying in a puddle of it, barely breathing. I thought you were dead.”

 

“I’m - “

 

“Just let me finish, Keith.” He sounds so tired; it breaks Keith’s heart. “I was so selfish. I put the shows over everything. I thought they were more important than was the Blades were doing. I thought - I thought that if I pushed hard enough, you would come back. I thought - we all thought - we could make the team work."

 

(Keith isn’t made for this.)

 

“And then you left, and Shiro was able to pilot the black lion again. We thought, okay, Keith isn’t a paladin anymore, but he’s not  _ gone.  _ But you just disappeared. Matt told us about your conversation, and I thought we had lost you forever.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“There’s no reason for you to be sorry. I’m just glad you’re okay. But if you do that again,” Lance smiles, “There won’t be enough of you to come home.”

 

Keith swallows, takes a step back, but forces a smile in the end. “Okay, yeah, okay. I won’t leave.”

 

(Keith can make this work.)

 

“We all love you, you know that, right? Matt told us about what almost happened, before Lotor came. We would all do the same for you.”

 

“I - I love you too. All of you.”

 

Lance smiles. “Come on, everyone will want to see you. Hunk might even make you a milkshake if you’re lucky.”

 

_ (“We would all do the same for you.”) _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!! i'm sorry for hurting him i couldn't help it  
> i know a lot of people are fighting on how much at fault allura is, and i personally think everyone's interpretation is valid, but a lot of inspo for this fic came from [this post](https://mother-iwa-chan.tumblr.com/post/166426051894/dragonescence-flusteredkeith-the-marmora-can)
> 
>  
> 
> i hope you enjoyed it, either way.  
> comments/kudos are super appreciated!!! love you!!!  
> tumblr - shuos-jedao and mother-iwa-chan and claude-lit  
> twitter - cactixix


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